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Samplitude Academy
Elastic Audio
Introduction
Elastic Audio is a tool for correcting pitch in audio material, and is suited for editing audio instruments as well as vocal tracks.
The feature lets you not only modify pitch or rescue off-key vocal recordings, but also change whole melodies, correct complete basic frequency sequences or even create additional harmonics!
Soundfile:
Soundfile (edited):
How does it work?
Elastic Audio's user interface offers you everything you need at a glance..
Select an audio object in your Arranger and pick "Elastic Audio" from the Effects menu from the Time and Pitch Effects area.
Following automatic or manual analysis of the material, Elastic Audio creates a pitch representation of the audio and the individual notes in the file.
A small Wave object (the example above represents a short vocals recording) is transformed into the following after analysis:
(Click to enlarge)
In the illustration, we see the user interface of the simple version of Elastic Audio, but in principle, what is described in this workshop is possible with any Elastic Audio version.
As seen in the screenshot, it is possible to work with pitch in detail after the analysis .
- The "bars" represent notes found in the audio file
- The orange-colored lines shows the (new) pitch sequence
It is clear that various options are now available in Elastic Audio.
For example, one can easily create back-up vocals or whole choirs from single vocals based on chords, as well as harmonic adjustments. There is even an integrated humanizing function (shifted application, varying pitch).
Here we will concentrate on one specialized application, which we have executed in an exemplary fashion .
The Samplitude team privately christened it the “Cher effect“ during production. It is a light, electronic sound and a harmonious, specific phasing, employed by artists such as T-Pain, among others.
The "Cher effekt"
(Click to enlarge)
In the illustration above you can see all the preparations for the experiment.
As an algorithm, we will keep the "Monophone voice". We are interested only in the "Edit slice object" area because we want to intervene very specifically and edit pitch as well as transitions.
After audio analysis, you can usually easily read the key note of the material. In our case, the first note of our vocal recording is clearly an "A".
In order to be able to edit slice objects (this is how individual notes are called) in a convincing fashion, we should take the key note as the basis for editing. T
Thus, we will select "A" as the underlying pitch.
The scale will remain "chromatic" in this example.
Quantization smoothing, earlier set to the default value of "10.00", will be set to "0.00". This will create a harder transition between individual notes, which will give the voice a slightly electronic, choppy touch.
Now, all you have to do is press the “Tune“ button one or several times (indicated in blue on the screenshot). The number of tune steps determines how clearly the effect will be audible. Try it out! In our test, we conducted 6-7 tune steps.
(Click to enlarge)
In our example we wanted to modify the vocals and give them an electronic “burst“, in addition to inserting a regular transition effect between the individual vocal notes.
Individual notes can be individually edited and moved, split and adjusted in Elastic Audio.
To split a note, simply select the scissors symbol from the top panel.
It is now recommended to play back the audio file and pick a position where the voice should be varied. As soon as you have picked this position, simply cut a part of the slice object out. In order to be able to work systematically, the grid in the top area directly inside Elastic Audio can be set up as desired (samples, time, etc.).
Now you can move the cut element to any desired pitch (as shown in the screenshot).
This is how you can create an interesting, harmonious effect for your vocals.
Alternatively, you can also first edit the material and apply the tune steps later.
Results
It only takes two minutes to have some good results:
Soundfile:
Soundfile (edited):
And now it is your turn!
You want to try this?
The following zip file includes the audio files (normal and edited) as well as this workshop as PDF document.
Download PDF & soundfiles (3,05 MB)
We hope you enjoy Elastic Audio!
Your Samplitude team
